Service-Oriented Architecture Promises Increased Flexibility
By Pam Baker
Wouldn't it be a great idea if an enterprise's IT resources could be linked and reused, enabling businesses to respond more quickly and cost-effectively to changing market conditions? That's the theory behind service-oriented architecture (SOA) and, in theory, systems developed according to SOA principles promise new levels of flexibility. In reality, however, nothing's ever that simple.
"You don't get SOA-based flexibility merely by building a library of services," says Randy Heffner, an analyst at Forrester Research based in Dallas, Texas. "AT&T learned this with its initial try at a Web services strategy, which took AT&T from having a bunch of disconnected, incoherent integration interfaces to having a bunch of disconnected, incoherent 'standards-based' interfaces."
But if the key to realizing the promise of SOA is not in the most obvious implementation, then where is it?
Right Key, Wrong Lock
Merely collecting services is not enough, says Heffner. To succeed with an SOA strategy, enterprises have to shape their service creation efforts within the context of business design and governance.
IT departments must approach the problem from a business-oriented perspective, rather than a technology-oriented one. "Quality management in SOA is not defined as how many defects per line of code you find, but how well the service meets the business requirements," says Sandy Carter, vice president of SOA and WebSphere strategy at IBM, in Somers, NY.
For example, an enterprise considering SOA must first ascertain whether an existing business process -- such as automated credit checking -- has already been created by another department in the company or another member of the IT staff. If this service already exists, a company can save time and money by (article continues)
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